This is the title that would be posted on a K****u article blog post in a desperate attempt to farm clicks from the faceless drones that make up their audience, distinct from the literal drones that actually farm clicks to make articles blog posts look more attractive to advertisers. But it bears repeating: if the purpose of a company is to enhance society by doing a lot more than a single individual can (and not just make money, because that would be fucking silly), then why do they go out of their way to inconvenience the people they are supposed to be serving?

Why do grocery stores put the milk in the very back of the store instead of the front, when the number one reason that people go to a grocery store is to buy milk? Why does Steam enforce DRM on every single title when it is a universally agreed notion that having the freedom to do what they want with the game that they buy is a good thing, instead of being lent piecemeal on a lease like every single digital distributor has now, except for those nattering little storefronts like GOG which were made to support this common sense notion? Why are people so pants-on-head retarded to allow such injustices, knowing full well that they could take simple steps to improve their liberty, when they are so apathetic that they just let injustices happen on a daily basis? Basically what I'm asking is how The United States can function as a country, and why Valve is still more popular than free blowjob night at a Super Smash Brothers tournament.

The universal hypothesis of everything goes like this: One, 99% of people will take the easiest, laziest, dumbest, and least-effort way to live their lives, and will seek out the options that will cause them to suffer the least amount of pain or stress, allowing them to live out their lives in the backwoods of Alberta breeding with their cousins as they hunt wild animals, instead of getting a real job and actually fucking mattering instead of living out your lifestyle that will cause you to die forgotten by the world within the decade. Two, 1% of people know full well this is the case, and will stop at nothing to exploit them for all they're worth, using psychological manipulation, more common known as "branding", to pander to this group of people that are too ignorant and lazy to give a shit about what they're being fed on a daily basis by the Powers that Be, and thus they give the Powers that Be money, and this continues the cycle of dickery. Basically you're a slave to people who are smarter than you, and there are only a small number of people smart enough and bold enough to educate you otherwise, so you're fucking welcome I'm here to guide you.

This isn't exactly true of course, and I'm not suggesting that every single company is on a conspiracy to systemically ruin the world. The interesting thing about this hypothesis, beyond me being forced to call it a "hypothesis" instead of a "theory" due to the Disinterested Hand of Acadamia creating a distinction in order to make everybody who isn't them look like idiots, is that it blends more than you think. There are very few people in the world who are outright evil, the same kind of people who hate you because of how you were born and not what you choose to be, who are okay with killing a dude for no benefit to them, and are okay with causing pain despite it not directly giving them anything of value. The 99% of stupid people are also the same type of people who work for, and even founded, these companies. Little acts of injustice, such as the GameCube controller's horrible D-pad, are the result of people not giving a shit enough to fix problems when they come up. And their bosses don't give a shit, either.

So what of this 1%? Well, typically these are the people you hear about in the news, or in books, good or bad. They're the blokes who are intelligent and lucky enough to get noticed by an elite group of people, work for a few years, and then keep a stranglehold on their popularity while the rest of the world comes and goes. These are your Steve Jobs types, industrials who helped ruin the world for the sake of their own popularity, hiding it behind marketing instead of facing up to the truth and trying to improve their horrible business practices. They're arrogant enough to know that once you're at the top of your field, there are a hundred different people who want your position, and so will keep it at any cost. Ethics to them is a non-issue, because so long as they've earned enough money to be famous for one thing, you have to stick to that thing no matter the cost, otherwise the media (the 99% of people) will report that they're off their rocker for suggesting a thing like improved workplace conditions is a good thing. Celebrity means giving up your chance to have a brain - and celebrities aren't stupid. They just choose to be, because it's beneficial.

At the very top are the 1% of malicious people who are rich and famous and are hell-bent on staying that way, and the 99% of people who either work for them or buy their products, because they just don't give a fuck. I mentioned before the handful of people who don't fit this mould, and decide to be bold and bring attention to the injustice of the world, because they are the extraordinarily rare breed of people who actually give a shit about the way its run. Richard Stallman is the obvious choice here, but there are so many examples that manage to be successful despite not fitting into this theory of ignorant 99% / malicious 1%, that it ends up creating a 101% dichotomy. The Alt-1%, to be sure. Seth Godin, Naomi Klein, Nina Paleys, and the rest of the minor celebrities with "Real" jobs, followed by the virtual unknowns such as Mr. Enter, Digibro, and the Art of Manliness crew, who actually care about the improvement of the world. Whether it be in the arts, business, or just overall health, there are plentiful examples of people who - while they are not multimillion dollar companies - manage to be some of the best and brightest in their own world.

So what's up with this? Why is there a contradiction here that the same easily-manipulative 99% is as willing to go with the Alt-1% as they are the Mal-1%? Well, they use the same tactics. The easiest way to make a sale is to tell someone what they already know, and pander to their worldview forever and forever, and this is why hugely successful and yet awful franchises like Call of Duty are still popular. They don't want change, essentially, until they have it. If you're trying to sell a book to a Muslim, it better be favourable to Islam, or else you're fucked. It's how Nintendo coasts along for so long releasing the same things year after year. They have a large group of people who like Mario, and hate change, so Nintendo releases the same Mario titles every single year. But when Mario does change, everybody loves it in the end, proving my point that nobody knows what they want until they have it - if you're fucking stupid, that is, as successful people know exactly what they want and are driven to reach their desires.

The fact is that the Alt-1% and the Mal-1% are using the same tactics to reach the same group of people: bloody well branding. It's no secret that capitalism is considered "out" these days, as the greed of the companies that support it have caused the people nothing but grief, leading us to a situation where we have been robbed of our paradise and yet with no idea, and with no power, to change it for the better short of an all-out military revolution of a world superpower, or political parties that give a shit. Marketing then, the art of telling people how to behave, what to buy, and to express nothing but total loyalty to the company in question, is a universally available thing. Richard Stallman is a marketer - he sells us ideas for free, and they are very positive ideas, and so this is one application of a normally malicious thing used for good. He sells us the idea that we must own our technology, do good to our fellow humanity, and say no to anything that will cause us to lose the goodness of society. Nike sells us ideas about the ideal superhuman, that buying their hundred dollars shoes (which were made in a factory for ten) will cause you to become as famous and as powerful as the celebrities that they pay to shill for them. Naturally, it's all bullshit. A core truth of marketing: 99% of everything is lies. Advertisers know this, and as a result are some of the smartest people in business.

So people, good and bad, use marketing in order to sell a worldview that their audience might be interested in. I know my audience, small as it may be, are just like me: pissed off over everybody's stupidity and looking out for the best of the best, because I won't be bothered with any old fucking trite. Sadly, despite the 99% wanting the best in the world, the 99% also dislikes fuck. They dislike the word fuck and they dislike the concept fuck. Fuck is impolite. Fuck is saying shit just for the fuck of it. Fuck is the last stand of vulgarity and freedom of language that graces English, endlessly versatile, and used forever. And yet fuck is not allowed unless you are of a lower class, a degenerate, who does not know how to use their language. Fuck is a symbol of the lesser, because only the lesser use fuck. I know this well. I don't fuck when it comes to people I usually don't fuck with. I have to be polite, because otherwise I could not imprint my point of view on them. They don't approve of fuck, because fuck means that you're lower than them for using lower language. Classism, plain and simple, summed up in fuck. And same for cunt, but cunt isn't as useful as fuck, though cunt is spicier as a noun and is harmless depending on cuntry.

People have to be manipulated in order to see your point of view. There's no getting around this - you'll find that most people can be grouped into templates that you can use a particular set of values and half-truths in order to imprint your own values on, or just ignore because it wouldn't be worth your time to convince them otherwise. Despite atheism being the only proper way to view the world, as religion is how you explain it to people too stupid, ignorant, and lazy to discover the virtues of history and science, I have never seen a religious person be converted at the request of an atheist. They have been manipulated to deep. Stupid people got to them first. What a shame it is that they chose to believe them, as oppose to seeing the world for how it is, and not how it was told by primitive humans who would much rather believe in the magical space fairy who lives in the sky and imprisons you after death. Oh right, you don't get to die. I would think that being certain that there would be no magical space fairy to judge you on its arbitrary terms and then be sent for all eternity to either a place that tortures you forever, or a place that offers unlimited pleasure and thus no pleasure at all after the first week, would be a virtue. But I guess it's your choice to "have faith" in somebody who would willingly torture you forever.

Naturally, anybody who closed the tab after getting through that filibuster is not somebody I want reading this blog, as they are the example of the cult of ignorance I so clearly thrash against. They are an example of the manipulated, and are an example of people who have been marketed to by the Mal-1% who knows that the 99% is looking for some certainty that they are good people, instead of actually being good like the rest of normal society. Another contradiction: 99% of people want to be good, but when evil occurs, they don't do a single thing to stop it. The Alt-1% actually do, and this is why they are celebrated: they understand that evil occurs because of several small acts of apathy, and they decide not to be apathetic and do something about it. They are generous souls, and deserve to be celebrated - though, the opinion of those who didn't care until somebody else did care... are these the people you really want the praise of?

The laziest and the dumbest people are the most easily manipulated, fortunate that there are so many of them out there (millions upon millions upon millions!), and so marketing manipulates them into following the worldview that the corporation wants. It isn't so simple as "most money thrown at advertising wins", unless you're the cheapest, most unremarkable, and most damaging to society, such as Walmart, Disney, and McDonald's, the symbols of supercapitalism, and the ones which manipulate the dumbest into getting what they want. Despite the notion of politicians being this Mal-1%, the reality is that they are a part of the 99%, because most of them aren't smart enough or bold enough to make positive changes in the world against the odds of whichever 99% of the political base in in power. Being good at manipulating people in one field doesn't mean you good in all fields, which is why politicians who get elected so often fail to make positive changes. They manipulated a group of people with a particular worldview into voting for them, and so they are required to fit that worldview, because being famous means you give up your right to a brain. They don't make controversial changes, because that means they don't get re-elected. They are the 99%, voted for by the 99%.

People must be manipulated into accepting change by framing it in a way that speaks to them personally. When Wind Waker came out, there was a vocal minority of people who hated it, and yet 99% of people who would buy it didn't care, because it's Zelda, and more of Zelda is a good thing. They liked it because it was the same thing in a shiny new box. They ate up the change because it was sold in a way that was familiar to them - there is no way around that people are fickle little idiots that must be led around like children, because when left to their own devices, history has shown that they will make consistently bad decisions, because they don't care. The unfortunate part of this statement is that when people are led by the 1%, we have to consider which 1% is leading them. If it's the malicious 1%, then whoever is being led is fucked, as are whatever they touch. If it is the benevolent 1%, then they may enter a golden age, where one brilliant individual brings glory and benefit to all they touch. So the reason why most societies let the 99% do whatever the fuck they want is because there's a hell of a lot more evil dictators than benevolent ones, and we have agreed that the effects of evil far outweighs the effects of good. So that's why we get this easily manipulated middle ground of democracy.

And I know what you've been thinking this whole time: people are more complex than this. Sadly so! It's this complexity, this number of variables, that make them so easy to manipulate. All you have to do is push one little trigger in order make them believe you, and if you don't get one right, find another one. It's like manipulating luck in a video game, actually, strange how games so often reflect our reality. If there's more ways to manipulate the luck, like performing an action makes a random number seed go up, then it's dead easy to get the result you want. But if there's next to no ways to manipulate this seed, such as having it be set from startup, then you're... out of luck............. but yes, people are more complex than this, and this is their ultimate downfall. The more you know about an individual, the more you may exploit them. This is why you must be wary of your closest friends. They know how to hurt you.

To sum it all up: the reason why Nintendo hates its customers is because 99% of people don't care, and there's a Mal-1% of people who realise this, and decide to pander to them the easiest and laziest entertainment, because that's what sells. Let us never use this terminology again, lest I become the same pretentious twat I so often ridicule, making up words in the vain hope that they will be popular, and never will be, because I don't have the backing of the elite group of people who will make those words a "thing".